Watch your butts

Watch your butts… don’t worry, we haven’t turned all american on you – the butts we’re talking about are the yellow, stubby tips at the end of cigarettes.

Those plastic fibrous little things, aka butts, are on the ends of cigarettes to stop bits of tobacco getting sucked into the mouth and to lessen the harshness of the pungent, cancer-rific smoke.

Every year, trillions, like, literally 6 000 000 000 000 cigarettes are made globally – now that’s a lot of butts that need to be throw away after the addictive tobacco has been smoked!

THE NUMBER ONE ITEM LITTERED ACROSS THE WORLD? CIGARETTE BUTTS.

But where do these end up? Yup, on your streets, in your drains, one our beaches and inside our beloved wildlife. It’s what they call a double-edged sword – there are over 4000 chemicals in a cigarette and a lot of these are trapped in the filter but if that filter ends up in a pond, river or sea, it’ll poison that water and any animals that happen to be there.

Litter butts into hedges or grassy greenery and there’s a strong chance it’ll get eaten by a rabbit or bird who thinks it’s a tasty treat. NoButts.org designed some graphic (but fake) images to show what the inside of these poor animals might look like after consuming too many butts (although one is too many though!)

Remember, butts are made of a type of plastic, they can’t be digested by animals and they will stay on the ground or in our waters for 10’s of years to come.

If you’re going to smoke, be responsible, put your butts in the bin. Don’t make animals suffer because of your waste.